The Last Word: Why I'm not throwing out my stuff, Sandy Hingston in The Week

Ages ago, before the Pandemic, there was a fad for what was called "Swedish Death Cleaning" by which we were (we old people that is) supposed to clear out our crap before we died and spare the inheritors having to do it. Right from the start I hated that idea for many reasons. First of all, I was insulted at the idea that I should erase all evidence of my life beore I even died! Secondly, didn't clearing out our parents' things after they were gone give us a chance to grieve and remember and cry and hold onto a memory of happy times! It is true that I didn't take much, mostly photographs, which is also what I inherited from my Grandmother, photos of her parents from the late 1800's.

Also, as a volunteer for half a dozen historic sites and organizations, Historical Societyies, since my retiremtne, I am very conscious of what the objects of the past tell us about times that are gone, and people who were here before we were. I used to be a suitcase history volunteer for a Historical Society and I took a chest of objects to grade schools to talk to children about Colonial history. The wonder on their faces when they handled the tools and tried to figure out what they were used for, or when they tried on the spectacles, or dressed up in reproduction cclothes. We lament that our children don't know about or care about histoty and then talk about discarding it as though those very objects are not the things that make history come alive!

There is a difference between hoarding and clutter and conserving family heirlooms. Old cardboard boxes, plastic milk jugs, clothes many sizes too small, these things should be put into the recycling stream, not packed away in corners and sheds, back rooms and attics - oh, but while we are on the subject of attics - When I was a college student working on a degree in Art, a sculpture teacher once caused us students to ponder the upcoming new world of houses without atticd. It immediately called up to me a memory turned over in my mind many times in my lifetime, of a place in my early childhood called Scott Storage. In Ocean City, on Asbury Avenue, near 6th Street, there was a huge (to my under ten year old eyes) warehouse with a dark, murky cavernous interior chock filled with giant and ornate pieces of mahogany Victorian furniture, plus pianos and most interesting of all, figureheads from ships, steering wheels from the helms, and small wooden boats once used with bigger sailing vessels were also stored there. Standing guard at the entrance with the old man on the chair, smoking his pipe, was a cigar store Indian. My family didn't have an attic, because we lived in a brick row home in South Philadelphia, but Scott Storage was enough of an example to get me pondering the question of what if there was no place to save the material culture of the past?

Mark my words, as soon as the young minimalist millenials reach the later stages of middle age, they are going to long to see those America Girl Doll trunks, those Polly Pockets, those Teddy Ruxpins and they will wish they could visit just one more time with the beloved books of their childhood such as Caps for Sale, or John Burningham's The Cupboard. My hoouse is my own little Old Curiosity Shop, and it will remain somewhat dusty and cluttered with the accumulated treasures of my 76 years until I die and no longer care about these things. My daughter can earn back all I did for her by going through these things and remembering me, and she can cry and grieve, and as she lets go of each item, she can send some of her sorrow awaay with it, the way you can tell your worry to a Guatemalan Wworry doll and toss it into a field.

Happy Trails, through the woods or through the dust - Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com s